Hello, have setup my proxmox server since some weeks recently I found that LXC containers could be useful as it really separate all my services in differents containers. Since then I figured out to move my docker’s services from a vm into several LXC containers. I ran into some issues, the first one is that a lot of projects run smoother in docker and doesn’t really have a “normal” way of being package… The second thing is related to the first one, since they are not really well implemented into the OS how can I make the updates?
So I wonder how people are deploying their stuffs on LXC proxmox’s containers?
Thanks for your help!
EDIT : Tried to install docker upon debian LXC but the performances were absolutely terrible…
If I remember correctly, Proxmox recommends running Docker in virtual machines instead of LXC containers. I sort of gave up on LXC containers for what I do, which is run stuff in Docker and use my server as a NAS with ZFS storage.
LXC containers are unprivileged by default, so the user IDs don’t match the conventional pattern (1000 is the main user, etc.). For a file sharing system this was a pain in the butt, because every file ended up being owned by some crazy user ID. There are ways around it which I did for some time, but moving to virtual machines instead has been super smooth.
They also don’t recommend running Docker on bare metal (Proxmox is Debian, after all). I don’t know the reasons why, but I tend to agree simply for backups. My VMs get automatically backed up on a schedule, and those backups automatically get sent to Backblaze B2 on a schedule
Basically I want to get rid of docker for the most part, and run apps directly into containers. So if one of my services corrupt or something bad happen I can recover from backup without affecting others. So how do you apply your backups when running several services in docker?
Honestly, what you’re trying to do is a great use case for docker already. I suggest learning more about how to use docker, take backups, restore from backups, etc. E.g., I have a NFSv4 share that I store all of my containerized services’ config and data files in. Any time I need to restore a precious version, it’s as easy as restoring the previous version files and starting the previous version container.
Yeah that could be an option too, but I kinda like the way how lxc works so I’m going to stick to it and write scripts to make the whole thing automated
Check out ansible for ways to automate this stuff. Highly recommended!
I thought to only cron to run weekly update
There are big differences between these two technologies. LXC is closer to a virtual machine than a docker setup. You could mimic most of a dockerfile if you wanted, but it’s not a replacement.
Most of us will use a mix og docker-hosts(vm’s running docker) and lxc. Reasons for this is that some stuff is easier to maintain in docker as it’s the preferred release channel.
You can also move vm’s to other datacenter hosts if needed - and with shared storage this is quick and mean no downtime. Lxc are stuck on the host.
Backup of docker would either be full host - for a simple and inflexible setup, or you do data and config backup (volumes mounted in docker), and rely on docker rebuilding the images.
This last type is more overhead in configuration of backup, but you can restore your containers on any host, individually